360° Video using 6 GoPro Cameras

“You know those little planet that you can tinker using panoramic photographs? I lead a very simple principle: You turn the camera once around its own axis, it takes a lot of still images, it adds together on the computer and bends the final panorama to a small planet. In the technical language is called the “spherical panorama”. As terrible as incurred cute, little worlds that still inspire me. Nowadays you can even it’s easy to take with the smartphone.

However, in order to breathe life into this little planet and put them as a moving picture, I’ve tried a lot of funny things in the last few years: I’ve screwed my cameras on the turntable and nights trying to put thousands of pictures. Has not worked. I have looked at strange constructions with mirrors and frustrated found that the absolute nonsense. Piece by piece, came the realization that I can realize 360 degree videos only when I capture the image in one take. So the logical conclusion was: Many cameras.

Luckily there GoPro cameras that cover with her fisheye lens a decent viewing angle. So you only need six cameras to record horizontally 360 ° and vertically 180 ° can. Provided you point the camera from exactly. The closer the lenses are to each other and the more overlap produce each camera the better the result. I have unsuccessfully experimented with rubber bands, cable ties, wood and polystyrene. Only with the construction of a support which has been printed in the 3D printer, everything worked satisfactorily. I have used this template as a base and a little bit off without the help of any crack of Hackerspace Bremen and especially without Andree’s and Michael’s involvement, would have been all that nothing.” – Jonas Ginter